By Erin Allday, San Francisco Chronicle

This project examines the stories of a group of men who have lived with HIV or AIDS for decades, much to the surprise of their health networks — and the men themselves. Given that we now think of HIV as something people can live with and not die of, it’s fascinating and heartbreaking to hear the stories of people who, decades ago, thought they, like many of their lovers and friends, would not survive long but who are alive today. As Allday writes, “Many men had the remarkable luck — and often brutal misfortune — to struggle on.” (Contributed by Andrew Joseph)

By Rosalind Adams, BuzzFeed News

An exhaustive investigation of a terrifying phenomenon: people seeking psychiatric help, often just a mental health screening, and being locked up in a for-profit mental hospital against their will and with no medical justification — sometimes so inescapably that not even the police could get them out. (Contributed by Sharon Begley)

By Ed Yong, The Atlantic

While no one can say precisely what will happen to science in a Trump administration, Ed Yong has put together a carefully documented road map, showing how science could be systematically separated from policy-making, on everything from ozone emissions to antibacterial soaps. (Contributed by Carl Zimmer)

By Justin Heckert, GQ

It’s a horrifying medical crime story — a phlebotomist father who injected his infant son with HIV-positive blood. That alone is unforgettable. But the journalist Justin Heckert focuses instead on what happened next: how, against the odds, a dying child not only lived but grew up to become someone remarkable. “Badger” Jackson’s story lingered with me long after I read it. (Contributed by Rebecca Robbins)

By Alice Proujansky, The New York Times

By Becky Little, photographs by Lynsey Addario, National Geographic

Alice Proujansky’s series is a smart look at both the quiet and frenzied moments that make up modern pregnancy, birth, and parenting. Lynsey Addario’s images draw attention to the issue of maternal mortality worldwide. Her photos are a stark reminder that birth without access to modern medical facilities is a precarious balance of life and death. Both of these photo essays are particularly timely as both reproductive health and parental leave have become increasingly important issues in the United States. (Contributed by Alissa Ambrose)

By Eli Saslow, The Washington Post

By Eyal Press, The New Yorker

This piece tells the compelling story of psychiatric staff in prison hospitals, who are given one of the hardest jobs in the world: care for people with mental illnesses in a system that doesn’t want them to get better. It takes people we might normally vilify for being complacent in a destructive system and helps us understand why it’s so hard to improve medical care in prisons. (Contributed by Ike Swetlitz)

By the Palm Beach Post staff

This is classic investigative reporting, exposing all the hallmarks of corruption — self-dealing, kickbacks, human brokering, and more — in the context of a modern addiction epidemic. (Contributed by Leah Samuel)

By Jie Jenny Zou, The Center for Public Integrity

By Andrew Pollack, The New York Times

This was a superbly sourced look at one of the most cutting-edge new treatments in cancer. Pollack talked to basically every important player in CAR-T, as well as several patients, and took a nuanced look at this therapy’s promise — and pitfalls. (Contributed by Meghana Keshavan)

By Joss Fong, Vox

Evolution is staring at you every day. Just look at your own body. This fun, accessible video reminds us of that. It leverages research (and cute animals normally wasted on the Internet for cheap clicks) for something deeper — an appreciation of how humans where built over eons, as well as some of the evolutionary leftovers we have kept. I have a vestigial muscle in my forearm. Do you? (Contributed by Jeff DelViscio)

By Harriet Ryan, Scott Glover, and Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times

This investigation paints a comprehensive picture of how the black market for painkillers can inflict untold damage on a single town. There must be hundreds of cities and towns like Everett, Wash., across the country. (Contributed by Dylan Scott)

By Misha Friedman, NPR

Native Americans face significant hurdles to getting health care, from long drives to the hospital to a lack of resources at underfunded clinics. This story gets into the details of those challenges and illustrates the issue with some beautiful photojournalism. (Contributed by Megan Thielking)

By Sarah Kliff, Vox

I loved this explainer (complete with stick figure illustrations!) on drug prices. It really cut through all the clutter and gave clear-eyed insight about our insanely complicated drug pricing system. (Contributed by Stephanie Simon)

By Andrew Pollack, The New York Times

This story pulls back the curtain on one of biotech’s most fascinating eccentrics, following billionaire R.J. Kirk as he hunts alongside falcons, promises to change the world, and counters claims that his cut-and-paste empire is heavier on hype than substance. Also, someone calls him “a mix of Leonard Cohen and Prince,” which is thought-provoking in its own right. (Contributed by Damian Garde)

By Maia Szalavitz, Scientific American

This important story points out something we rarely talk about: how diagnostic structures for autism spectrum disorder are set using behavior in boys. It causes parents an untold amount of grief and frustration as they try to get diagnoses for their daughters as they run up against checklists that don’t apply to them. The story synthesizes experience and data and creates a call for change. (Contributed by Megha Satyanarayana)

By Nick Bilton, Vanity Fair

John Carreyrou and the Wall Street Journal have driven the exceptional coverage of Theranos, documenting how the high-flying biotech and its celebrity chief, Elizabeth Holmes, had built a company based on a discredited blood-testing technology. So it was all the more impressive that Nick Bilton of Vanity Fair, undeterred by the unflagging and impressive reporting from the Journal, burrowed his way into Theranos. His piece is packed with compelling details about how Theranos operated under Holmes and brings important context to the entire saga. He doesn’t shrink from documenting the Journal’s role in the piece, to the point of noting that, internally, company leaders had an anti-Carreyrou chant: “Fuck you, Carreyrou!” (You didn’t read THAT in the Wall Street Journal!) Both the Journal and Vanity Fair are another reminder to us all that we need to look skeptically behind the glitz of corporate America. (Contributed by Rick Berke)